Mark Palmer

Ambassador Palmer see RightWeb profile "is President of Capital Development Company (CDC), which supports local partners in launching new enterprises in Washington, D.C. and in the capital cities of Europe and Asia. He is the founder and co-owner of Central European Media Enterprises Ltd. (CME), which is engaged in the development, ownership, and operation of leading national commercial television and radio stations broadcasting from Prague, Bratislava, Ljubijana, Bucharest, Warsaw and Kiev. Ambassador Palmer is a former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in charge of U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and East Central-Europe and Director of the State Department's Office of Strategic Nuclear and Conventional Arms Control. Ambassador Palmer is a co-founder and sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy, and is a member of the board of the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; International Research & Exchanges Board; the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University; and the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training." 

"He is President of Capital Development Company LLC, and Chairman of SignalOne Media which invest in the United States and overseas. ... and also serves on the boards of Center for Communications, Health and the Environment, Friends of Falun Gong and New Tang Dynasty Television. He graduated from Yale University in 1963, Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude. He is the author of “Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025”."

He is vice chairman of Freedom House, vice president of the Council for a Community of Democracies, an Advisory Board Member of the Democracy Project.

"He organized and participated in the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit as the State Department's top "Kremlinologist," and as the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary helped persuade its last dictator to leave power. He has been active on China and the Middle East, recently, for example, as the founding board member of an organization to support the largest movement for change in China, and working to support the emergence of politically independent commercial television stations throughout the Arab world, including addressing a meeting on media and democracy for the region which was held in Qatar in April 2003.

"From his days in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, through demonstrating in the streets of Budapest as ambassador, to marching with the students in Belgrade against Milosevic in 1996, he has witnessed and practiced the power of organized nonviolent force in achieving freedom and justice. As a successful venture capitalist and investor from 1990 to the present, and president of his own company, he also has realized the potential of business in the transition to democracy. He co-founded Central European Media Enterprises, which financed and launched the first national independent television stations in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, and Ukraine with more than $600 million in investment. Finally, he is a recognized writer and advocate, having written speeches for six Secretaries of State and three Presidents, including as principal speechwriter for Henry Kissinger and co-author of Ronald Reagan's favorite speech, and as Vice Chairman of the Board of Freedom House, a frequent contributor to published appeals and policy statements, and participant in democracy programs in the United States and across the arc of dictatorships stretching from China, through the Middle East and Africa, on to Belarus and Cuba." 

Married to Sushma Palmer.


 * Member, Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion
 * International Board, International Centre for Democratic Transition (accessed Sept 07)
 * Director, Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia
 * Advisory Board, Friends of Falun Gong USA
 * Advisory Board, Project on Middle East Democracy
 * Advisor, Spirit of America
 * Former Director, MCT Corp (since May 2001)

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 * Mark A. Palmer